Geomagic DSSP software helps manufacturers

Geomagic Studio 3D digital reconstruction and Geomagic Qualify computer-aided inspection software is being used to help manufacturers increase digital engineering skill levels.

The software is being used by the Digital Factory team at the Institute for Automotive and Manufacturing Advanced Practice (AMAP) at the University of Sunderland, The Digital Factory Team used Geomagic Studio and Geomagic Qualify to enable 3M, a technology company, and Beamish, an open air museum, to overcome their problems.

It was a restoration project on an 1877 Lewin locomotive, as well as similar work on a tram and a Victorian cart, gave Beamish reason to call in the Digital Factory team.

A number of damaged objects, including a steam injector from the locomotive, needed to be replaced.

Replica parts like the steam injector are notoriously difficult and costly to source and manufacture.

The task was to find a cost-effective way of producing an accurate, operational replica of a damaged item for which there were no drawings or any other form of design information.

Geomagic Studio DSSP software was critical to the project's success.

DSSP describes the ability to use scanning hardware and processing software to digitally capture physical objects and automatically create accurate 3D digital models with associated structural properties for downstream design, engineering, rapid prototyping, inspection and custom manufacturing.

Using a Z-Corp 3D optical scanner, the Digital Factory team scanned the original steam injector supplied by Beamish and transferred the resulting 'point cloud' data directly into Geomagic Studio.

Here the individual scan files were registered with each other to create a single 3D point cloud model and the software's intelligent noise reduction tools were used to eliminate any 'noise', or errors that had occurred during the scanning process.

Next, the software's wrap feature was used to automatically 'wrap' a polygonal surface around the point cloud.

Tools in Geomagic Studio then allowed the Digital Factory team to refine this polygon model, by filling any holes left by the scanning process and by smoothing, fitting, trimming, projecting and extending boundary edges, where necessary, to create an accurate, 'water-tight' digital polygon model of the original steam injector.

The final step in the 3D modelling process was to use Geomagic Studio to convert the finished polygon model, automatically, to a high-quality NURBS (non-uniform rational b-spline) digital surface model.

This was then exported to CATIA 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software for engineering detailing.

The final 3D digital model was saved as an STL (stereolithography) file and transferred to a Z-Corp Spectrum Z 150 rapid prototyping machine where a precise, physical replica of the original steam injector was produced in resin.

This could then be used as a casting pattern for a mould to manufacture a new part in metal.

The whole process, from scanning the original injector to having an exact replica in their hands, took the team just three days.

First-article and in-process quality inspection is another aspect of the manufacturing process in which the team has demonstrated the benefits of the technology.

3M, the global diversified technology company, manufactures face masks and respirators used in industry for worker health and safety.

It was experiencing quality problems in the production of a model of face mask, with unacceptable variations occurring in the masks coming off the two injection moulding production lines.

Fraser Shearer, senior manufacturing technologist at 3M, decided that the tool-sets should be inspected to see if the problem lay with them.

Using traditional inspection methods it would have taken as long as three weeks, at considerable cost in terms of lost production, to inspect the multiple mould tool-sets involved.

The Digital Factory team used Geomagic Qualify computer-aided inspection software, together with a 3D optical scanner, on the 3M project.

Geomagic Qualify uses DSSP technology to allow fast, easy-to-understand graphical comparisons between 3D CAD models and as-built parts.

It saves time and increases accuracy for first-article and in-process inspection and enables trend analysis, 2D and 3D dimensioning, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GDandT) and automated reporting in a variety of formats, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF and VRML/HTML.

The tool-set, with its doubly curved surfaces, was scanned with the Digital Factory's Z-Corp optical 3D scanner and the resulting point cloud data, accurate up to 0.05mm, was exported directly into Geomagic Qualify where, after processing, it could be displayed as a faithful scan data model of the original physical mould tool.

With the digital model of the tool-set established as the master, the other tools were then scanned, and with the data imported into Geomagic Qualify, the resulting scan data models could be compared and measured against the master model, using the 'best-fit' process.

The results showed up - graphically - the defects in the tools that had been causing 3M its production problems.

'Using this process enabled us to complete the 3D measurement and inspection of the tool-sets in two days and without any factory down-time,' said Shearer.

In addition to the visual comparison, the Digital Factory team also used Geomagic Qualify to take sections through the doubly-curved surfaces of the mould tools and generated a series of 2D profiles.

These were saved as DXF files and passed to 3M to enable them to compare the profiles of the in-spec tool-set with the different versions of their CAD model to determine the correct version.

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